Follow the journey of a family of 4 as they transform their lives, move aboard a boat, and sail around the world full time. The observations gained on this quest regarding money, life and family are shared here.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Living or Surviving

Waking up on the boat this morning, I wondered about the fish below. Are they living life? Or are they surviving life? Are they enjoying the ocean and all it offers? Or are they merely avoiding being eaten? Thinking about the whole cycle of life going on below, I couldn't help but draw parallels to us humans and our life above.

It seems to me many people are surviving life. They are just trying to avoid being eaten. A fish, I get. They are operating purely on instincts and they have legitimate, life threatening predators hunting them. But how many legitimate predators do we humans have hunting us? For people, almost every predator is imaginary. Heck, most of those don't even cause physical, mortal, harm. Instead, nearly every predator for a human attacks a sensibility of some sort.

Life is a wonderful gift and it is hard to imagine spending it surviving life, especially when we are in the fortunate position to not have a life threatening predator around every piece of coral. The only restraint we have is our mind. As FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself.” It is fear that puts us into survival mode, and for a vast majority of us, that fear is based on some false foundation.

Today, I chose to live life. I chose to enjoy every amazing offering that is before me. I chose to not put myself into a protective place for fear of an imaginary monster. I chose to take advantage of this incredible experience of being alive. I chose to live life.

@Mike: So as not to pollute information on the Internet any more than has already occurred, I've adjusted the text. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. In my mind, I was thinking about the whole gutsy move of the moon mission, but the focus really was on fear of fear.